[sugahorse1]

I tihnk I may have asked this before:

For what reasons do you go to therapy and what are you hoping to achieve?

I am BP II and struggle with depression mainly - how can I expect my T to help me with this? These are MY emotions and no amount of talking can help what is going on in my head.
I feel like I'm wasting my time in T, as it appears there just is no point.
I have a friend I can talk to and confide in - why then do I need to regurgitate it in T?
T is a lovely person, but from the reading I've done here, a T and their patient need to be emotionally distant from each other (Not sure that made sense, but basically you cannot have social encounters with your T, chat regularly on the phone, become their "friend"...)
I just want someone to care about how I feel - and I'm not sure a T will - but your friend can.

Arg - sorry about the rant. I'm just trying to put the pieces together.
Being depressed, lonely, needy, anxious...are these really things I can expect therapy to help with?

[WePow]

I had no choice really... If I did not enter therapy, I was on the verge of lossing my sanity. So then I had to work on the trauma stuff - uggg. Now I am trying to re-learn how to be an adult who is healthy.

(((((((((((sugahorse)))))))))))

My life kind of unraveled in 2004, and although I managed to keep it together for a while, I slowly started coming apart, and started having lots of flashbacks about childhood traumas....so I started seeing T in 2007.

For me, talking to T feels different from talking to a friend. He's ENDLESSLY patient - it took me years to be able to trust him and he was just consistent and waited until I was ready. He's completely focused on me and my needs...when I am with him, his only goal is to help ME feel better. I am a big time caretaker, and learning to let someone take care of me was difficult, but now it feels really good. Knowing he is there, week after week, gives me a sense of security. No matter what's going on, I know that it won't be too long before I see T, and he will help me process it and figure it out.

It's true that we can't be "friends" outside of our therapeutic relationship. But I know for sure that he really does care about me. I used to work in the human services, and even though I couldn't be "friends" with my clients outside of work, I cared about them VERY much. I still think about some of them years later, and wonder how they're doing.

As for being depressed, lonely, needy, anxious....yes, I SO think therapy can help with those. When I started therapy, I was terrified - TERRIFIED - all the time. I felt completely unsafe in the world. When I was driving I thought people were following me, when i was in the store, I thought i was going to be attacked, I couldn't sleep at night if my H wasn't home, I lived in CONSTANT fear of losing track of my autistic son out in public...just a ton of fear and anxiety. When I sat down to meditate, I would be overwhelmed with flashbacks and panic. ALL of that is GONE now. GONE. I'm not nearly as lonely as I used to be, because I've learned to trust people a little more, and to let people in. I was completely walled off to everyone before, even H. I've taken some of the bricks out of the walls, and I haven't been hurt, and I'm much closer to people. I decided to start an anti-depressant about 6 months ago when I couldn't pull myself out of the sadness I was stuck in after so much trauma processing....and I'm really glad I did. It helped me feel better and kept me moving forward.

Therapy is HARD WORK. Sometimes, excruciatingly hard, and it really IS hard to tell if it's worth it, because the progress can feel soosooo slow. For me, it's really really really been worth it, and I'm glad I stuck it out through the 457295724092 times I considered quitting.

to you

[sugahorse1]

I guess I too have no idea how to be a healthy adult - one that can conduct oneself properly in society. I have no idea how to control my emotions, or feel them correctly.

I agree with you in that I am reaching out to Therapy as a way of saving myself. The first time I started therapy was when my pdoc kind of just made me go - I was in hospital due to Major Depressive Episode and this lady came to sit next to me :-)

Now I am going due to my own will, hoping it will help me. But not sure what progress I'm making..?

[sugahorse1]

thanks Treehouse - so there is hope that I am on the right track.
I do not believe that there is much baggage from my childhood years, as I grew up in a loving home. I have just always been a bit of a loner, often being depressed in High School. Why - I don't know!
I guess T will have to try work it out. Or maybe that's just who I am.

[Ygrec23]

Sugahorse asked: "For what reasons do you go to therapy and what are you hoping to achieve?"

The immediate reason I go to therapy is to get rid of the horrible self-termination thoughts I used to spend most of every day thinking. They were unbearable. They occupied my entire life for three years. The more general reason was to get out of the fog of incomprehension generated by my defense mechanisms and finally, for the first time in my life, be aware and available to interact with other people in Real Life. And that meant finding out what I was really hiding from way back in the beginning. That's what we're doing now. And since I trust and admire my T (my wife and I were friends of hers and her husband's before), we had a fast start and are already doing serious stuff. I leave her office feeling intensely upset or intensely happy. Which means we're doing serious things. I was really ready for this, and raring to go. I think she's really happy with me, since I was primed for therapy, can answer her questions, can cooperate with her on what we're doing and how we're doing it. I want her to ask me all the hard questions (including the hardest) over and over. It's just going well, and I just know this is going to be successful. Take care!

[WikidPissah]

Why do I go to T? That's a really good question. I think I go so that I have someone to talk to. Sounds dumb when I write it out like that. I have a good husband, and a couple "kind of" friends, but I would never want to dump the dark crap inside of me on someone I care about. The funny thing about all of this is I can't exactly get myself to dump it on T either. So, yea...I'm probably wasting time and money, but regardless I go...because I don't know what else to do.

[gkeeper]

I go because I was tired of waking up and feeling like ***** all the time.

My T is tons better at having the unconditional positive regard than any of my friends ever have been.

You know, if you're not sure what progress you're making in therapy, ask. There are probably ways that you're progressing that you're just not able to step far enough back to see. Personally, I make my T tell me those things fairly often.

[sugahorse1]

Thanks Ygrec - I do trust T. Sometimes I think we are not hard enough, and I leave feeling nothing has been achieved.
At other times I feel we are just beginning to touch the tip of an enormous iceberg, and time runs out :-(
Sometimes I leave really upset
Sometimes I spend the whole next week regurgitating a few things that were touched on...

[beadlady29-old]

Why do beads see T?
because pdoc will not see us and prescribe meds she needs unless she see T.;cmh kinda forces her ta go.........
that said, our T is good, most of the time anyways, and he is very patient with beads an we know he is tryign ta help, we just have a hard time ta trust anyone enuf ta let them help us. this 'process' thing is really hard far beads.she dont wanna regurgitate ( like your word their ta describe what they expect you ta do good sugarhorse!)the past neither.
m.s.

[sugahorse1]

gKeeper - I will try that approach of asking when I see her again on Thurs. Tnx

[Elana05]

Originally Posted by sugahorse

I tihnk I may have asked this before:

For what reasons do you go to therapy and what are you hoping to achieve?

I am BP II and struggle with depression mainly - how can I expect my T to help me with this? These are MY emotions and no amount of talking can help what is going on in my head.
I feel like I'm wasting my time in T, as it appears there just is no point.
I have a friend I can talk to and confide in - why then do I need to regurgitate it in T?
T is a lovely person, but from the reading I've done here, a T and their patient need to be emotionally distant from each other (Not sure that made sense, but basically you cannot have social encounters with your T, chat regularly on the phone, become their "friend"...)
I just want someone to care about how I feel - and I'm not sure a T will - but your friend can.

Arg - sorry about the rant. I'm just trying to put the pieces together.
Being depressed, lonely, needy, anxious...are these really things I can expect therapy to help with?

To me, it's kind of like this. We are born like a blank hard drive. From birth onward we are collecting data like: what our place is in the world, what it is like to be in a relationship with important people (parents), how other people care for us, how we care for others etc. We get "hard-wired" from the start. Then we use this initial data to go on and live our lives, all the while referring back to that original information that we gained early on. But at some point we may realize that our original data is not making a good foundation and is actually causing harm to our system. Maybe the original data contained a lot of viruses that caused original damage. In this analogy, our early relationships help form the hard drive we work from (they are kind of like early external forces). However, sometimes these changes to our "hard drive" from the external forces occur later on caused by trauma and resulting PTSD. Or the changes can occur to our "hard drive" at any time even without any external forces, rather the forces are internal like chemical imbalance. Sometimes we have one type, sometimes two, sometimes all three.
So (IMO) a good therapist is there to help us to re-write our hard drive with better software that doesn't shut us down, or cause us damage when we use it. So we can run more smoothly. She or he is there to help us to switch out any fundamental data that is causing us more harm than good.

[jexa]

I'm in therapy mostly to deal with anxiety and low self-esteem. I am a very twitchy and anxious person, most of the time. I guess I'm also sort of wanting to resolve PTSD but am wary to delve into / process traumas since in the past, delving into trauma was retraumatizing to me and made things a lot worse. Mostly I just want to stop hating myself, and I want to be able to relax, and I want to find a place inside myself that is peaceful and quiet. A lot has gotten better with the therapy I've had, but I'm not where I want to be.

[suzzie]

Im in for mostly trauma, but I dont understand how T determined that. I hope to work on some aspect of socializing. Did mention that to T amazingly enough. I make nearly no conversation with anyone and no eye contact. And I dont make any effort to meet people -- I dont want to. I find being around people is work for me. So maybe some of that can be changed.

[blueoctober]

I see a therapist because it helps to talk about my concerns with someone that is impartial. She also helps me see things from a different perspective when I get "tunnel vision". For me managing the bipolar effectively is a combo of things and therapy is one of them.

I have some very close friendships, but I don't want to burn them out with endless talking about issues that will come up again and again i.e. depression, childhood abuse. My friends are also not equipped to help me work through those issues. Yes they can be great listeners, but I need to work through those feelings.

[sunrise]

My reasons have really changed over the last few years since I started. Initially I went to my first therapist because I was severely depressed and wasn't functioning well at home or at work. I needed help with getting out of my marriage--didn't know how to do it and was terrified. She helped somewhat with depression but not the marriage. Went to second T to help me get unstuck from proceeding forward in life. He did trauma work with me and helped get me unstuck and helped me through the end of the marriage. He has helped me learn to recognize what feelings I have, to be able to express them better, and to take some risks in revealing them. I am still working on this feeling stuff! He is also helping me be a better communicator--more direct and honest, and checking with people before making negative assumptions about what they are thinking.

Now I continue to go to therapy because I am not all I can be. I have more potential to be even healthier, more functional, and happier. My therapist helps me with things that come up in my life. Like right now, he is helping me to deal with the end of life time for my parents. He helps a lot with my relationships and how to have healthy, deeper, and more satisfying ones--still working on this too! I also continue to go to therapy because I really like my relationship with my therapist and I don't want to give that up. He "gets" me and helps me. I'm moving forward and becoming happier. I have a lot of things yet to work on. Plus, I find the mind and psychotherapy really interesting. I am learning to be more transparent to myself.

[darkrunner]

Hi Sugahorse,

I am therapy now for trauma, but when I was in highschool and college I had a period of depression - about 3-4 years.

I think when depression goes on for a long time, it can negatively affect a person's self esteem and core beliefs. I know that was the case for me, and even when I wasn't so depressed anymore, I felt lousy about myself. It took a long time for me to finally feel good about myself again. (and then the trauma/SA happened - blah).

Therapy is a good place to work on changing the core beliefs because therapists see us objectively and can help us learn to draw upon our strengths.
I think it takes a really long time, though.

lets see; depression, CSA, rape trauma and very low in the gutter self esteem. it is weird though, most people see me as someone who has it all put together, but underneath is a tangled mess of feelings, thoughts and suicidal ideation....t did help alot with this, now i am mad at him and hurt

[rainbow8]

I'm in therapy because I like it so much, or maybe I need it so much, that I can't get myself to ever quit. Years ago, I started because I was depressed about a lot of disappointments in my life. Once I felt the connection with my T, I was "hooked."

Underlying the want/need for therapy is wanting someone to be there for me always, so I am in therapy to work on getting myself to be the one who can take care of me, and not a T. I have trouble coping with life on my own, and feel like I need a T to comfort and validate me. My hope is that finally, with this T, I can learn how to handle my feelings of being overwhelmed and unloved. I want to learn how to be in the middle instead of feeling like I'm at 10, and then plummeting down to 1. I am working on how to handle stress and anxiety. I am also exploring my childhood and learning to accept all the different parts of my personality, especially those child parts who are still stuck in their roles from the past.

I like having someone to go to each week who will listen to anything I have to say without judging me. Someone who is always on my side and cares about me.

[krusty13]

The reason I go to therapy is when I have a problem I cannot solve on my own, or I have regressed into negative thinking patterns that I need help adjusting. For me therapy has been very helpful at doing both of these things. My unhealthy thinking gets challenged and I learn new ways to think. I ask for help and advice on how to handle things in a better way for me.
Like Ygrec23, when I go to therapy I go to do WORK. I open up about all the things I don't want to talk about, I let them challenge me, I am honest about my thoughts and feelings, no matter how embarassing, and I follow their suggestions when they give them to me.
I agree with what others have said, if you do not feel you are progressing, bring it up, perhpas your T is waiting for you to be rady to go to the next level. I think If I am spending the money on something to help me I am going to take full advantage. So far everyime I've gone to counselling for my depression, I have successfully come out of the depression because of it.
Good luck at the next session and keep us updated on how it goes. K13

[sugahorse1]

I'm busy in T mainly because of depression. But when a bad spell hits me between sessions, all wheels fall off. I hate that feeling.
I've been told by T I need to work on feeling fulfilled - to self-soothe when things get rocky.

How long have you been in therapy? How often do you go?

Originally Posted by sarthur1229

How long have you been in therapy? How often do you go?

My three year anniversary is next month, and I've gone twice a week about 95% of the time. We started transitioning down to once a week a few months ago (3 times every 2 weeks) but I'm back up to twice a week right now.

That's a LOT of therapy hours

[Kacey2]

I go to therapy because I accidentally killed someone and it is really hard to live with that guilt.

and childhood abuse.

[cmac13]

19 years with the same therapist dealing with attachment/abandonment issues, PTSD, anxiety, sexual difficulties and childhood abuse...I am definitely in a better place in my life now than I was when I first began...